New Play in Manhattan

Remains To Be Seen (by Howard Lindsay & Russel Grouse; produced by Leland Hayward) does a straight hack job in hit-or-miss fashion. In their first mystery farce, the authors of Life With Father and the producers of Arsenic and Old Lace never manage to make murder, or much of anything else, amusing. When the curtain goes up, a highly unpopular vice-snooper is already dead, and in due time a highly unperturbed audience finds out who killed him. But the mystery side of Remains To Be Seen can largely be ignored; indeed, the playwrights themselves set the example.

They concentrate most on a romance between an exuberant young singer in a hot road band (Janis Paige) and a repressed young apartment manager who busts out by banging the traps (well-banged by Jackie Cooper). There are moments of fun and stretches of farcicality. But even the parts that click are glaringly machine-made. What is most disappointing, in terms of Lindsay & Grouse, is less their being wide of the mark than their choice of a target.

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